Third Best
by xxRoroxx
Summary: Near wakes with a silent scream on his lips. What follows changes an entire life for a slacking, gaming kid. And to clear up any confusion, yes, the chapters are named after video games that I feel relate to the chapter.
1. I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream

Near wakes with a silent scream on his lips. He can't remember why he was screaming, or who he was screaming too. He looks at his clock. It's 2am. He thinks through the situation, then reasons he can sleep earlier tonight and get up now. So, he does.

In the main room, the only company he has is the humming of the many machines. Sometimes someone will walk by on the CCTV cameras. Every time he sees one with blond hair he pauses the image and hurries over, his pulse racing. And every time he sees one with blond hair, it isn't _him_, and his heart breaks a little more. Near knows it's stupid, ridiculous, that L would never have let some ridiculous _crush_ get in the way. But Near isn't L, and never can be L.

He gets up, robot in hand, and goes out to the kitchen. He gets himself a glass of water, and brings it back. He sits down, drinks it. It's cold, and fresh, and in his haste he spills a little down himself. He's almost embarrassed though there's no-one else there, and wipes his mouth self-consciously. He slurps some more, then sees another blond. He doesn't even bother investigating. If he had gone a little closer, he would have seen skin-tight leather under a heavy parka, and a scar zigzagging down the side of an angel's face. Then, the door swings open. Near looks up and finds himself face to face with the very man he'd been searching for most of his life. "Near." the blond snarls. Near has just enough time to calculate the percentage of not getting shot in the next millisecond. The odds are not good.

There's a shot, and a glass of water tips over, spilling its contents like life draining away.

Mello looks at the broken body of the albinoteenage boy. Mello looks at his reflection in the CCTV screen. This isn't the guy he wants to be.

"Amen." he says, and he lifts the gun to his head.


	2. Hide and Secret

It takes the officials three years to find Matt. He's tucked away in a dingy apartment in the part of Miami where if you step out without a weapon, you're going to die. From the police point of view, it appears that all Matt's been doing is playing every single gun-related game that's come out on the Nintendo. From Matt's, he's been researching.

Apparently, Matt didn't know about L's death. Or Near's. Or Mello's for that matter. But for a guy whose 'family' has been murdered by a Death God, murdered by Matt's best friend, and committed suicide respectively doesn't seem to be showing a lot of emotion. In fact, he looks itching to get back to Kane and Lynch: Dead Men. There's just one last thing for them to say – Matt's L.

This throws him. You can tell from behind the goggles. His eyes widen, his limbs stiffen, and you could even say his breathing stops for a second. "Okay," he says, "So what do I do now?"

"Come with us. _Now._"

Matt's never been a fan of snotty demands, and he raises an eyebrow and looks at the guy. "So. I'm L, you say." the cop nods. "And you are?"

"Sergeant Abraham Nichols."

"And therefore, that would mean that I'm of higher authority than you, _Sergeant_ Abraham Nichols. And by that logic, get the hell off my property."

This wasn't going to as easy as they'd thought. Well. Nothing ever is.


	3. Devil May Cry

Eight hours and as many tequilas later, Matt's in a high-rise building in Tokyo. After they figured out Matt's secret MMORPG obsession, they bought him a fifteen-year subscription to World of Warcraft, and a level 136 Runescape account and he agreed to anything. Literally, anything. In fact, he was trying to persuade them to let him pole-dance. But, maybe that had more to do with the tequilas than anything else.

One of the (admittedly many) downsides to Matt being L was the fact that they had to monitor his screen, to make sure he wasn't checking his Virtual Horse Ranch. Or Virtual Pups. Or Sand Box Farm. Or any other god-damned online game. But by the third day they realised it was pointless trying to stop him, he'd already hacked the CCTV cameras pointing on his monitor eighteen times, and the last time he'd done it he posted the top half of a picture of a naked Mello. They didn't want to see the rest of it. God knows how, but Matt always seemed to be able to do the work needed, eventually. Some nights (all nights) when Hal walked down to get a drink at 4am, Matt was up on his laptop, thinking up strategies of how to split up a ring of perverts, or typing out safety precautions and risk assessments. Or writing Naruto yaoi, but we'll draw a veil over that for the time being.

But, you know, there were good sides too. When he was up at 4am, then for half an hour or so he could forget, or try to, the gnawing grief that consumed him. When he slept, then he'd wake up and remember. The obvious answer was to not sleep.

Matt's really beginning to understand why L had bags under his eyes.


End file.
